Thursday, June 23, 2011

Registrations for the conference have been flowing in, so if you have done registered yet please do so to ensure your place. Jonathon and I are looking forward to meeting everyone!

Conference packs will be available from 8.30am on the day, and the first session will begin promptly at 9am. Lunch and afternoon tea are provided (but please bring your own take away coffee or tea in the morning if you want one).

The conference is due to finish at 5.15pm, and will be followed by an informal discussion of the possibility of an official Historical Materialism Journal conference in Australia in 2012 (commencing at about 5.45pm). All attendees are welcome to be involved in this discussion.

Saturday June 25 - Sydney

It seems significant, and hardly coincidental, that the impasse that politics fell into after the 1960s and 1970s coincided with the eclipse of Marx and the research project of historical materialism. Social democracy, various left-wing melancholies and/ or the embrace of dead political forms has stood-in for these absent names. Returning to Marx, to Capital and to the various traditions tied-up with these names may present a way to cut across this three-fold deadlock.

The papers at Capital Against Capitalism will respond to contemporary politics from a range of historical materialist perspectives. We want to bring together the theoretical discussions and debates occurring in Capital reading groups, PhD study circles, and Marxist political organisations and networks. Our conjuncture – its manifold crisis – urges new analyses, new strategic orientations and the engagement of activists and academics alike on these questions.